YouTube Academy - How to Improve Your YouTube Channel

YouTube Academy

YouTube Academy Sign Up

Signing up for YouTube Academy is free. After receiving an invitation in the mail to join the free class, I immediately signed up. My YouTube Channel needed lots of help.

I was sent the link to sign up for the course, the course URL and the Google+ location for the Hangouts. Hangouts are live broadcasts from YouTube experts. They will answer questions asked during the broadcast.

There is also a link to the YouTube Academy Forums which I signed up for and tried to participate in. Most of the time, the forums froze up or contained way too much duplicate information. I also received tons of spam just from the one post that I was able to publish.

Another link sent was for a 'pre-course' survey. I did take this, but I'm not sure if it was pertinent or not. The post course survey helped to coalesce what I learned during the course. Hopefully it will help to design an easier course as this one was somewhat difficult.

In my opinion, two weeks is no enough time to learn the basics of YouTube. A month long course would probably be more beneficial to newbies or unskilled computer users.

I also recommend signing up for some sort of video making and editing course as videos are much harder to produce than written text, for me at least. But videos are worthwhile as a picture always paints a thousand words!

This is just after I finished the course. | Source

Summary of YouTube Academy Lessons

(click column header to sort results)

Lesson Title

Content

Actions and Comments:

1.1 Intro

What Channel inspires you and why?

Introduces the various components of the new 'OneChannel'. Recommended resources for getting started with YouTube.

1.2 Subscribers

Why are subscribers important?

How to attract and keep subscribers - similar to how to attract and keep followers on HubPages!

1.3 Analytics

What contributes the most to your traffic patterns?

Varies, but after viewing your personal analytics, it is usually subscriptions, recommended by users, searches, external links and embedded videos

2.1 How to benefit from the YouTube One Channel

Benefits of Design

How to do the new design roll out, freshen up your channel, attract new viewers, increase watch time

2.2 Under the Hood

Subscribed vs Unsubscribed Viewers

How to make a trailer video to present your channel, ask for subscribers and inform your viewers about the viewing schedule (like a tv show)

3.1 Branding

Branding is based on content, appearance and searchability

Learn how to be consistent with your brand and establish brand loyalty

4.1

Branding Bling

Making first impressions count with a consistent message!

4.2

Branding Checklist and Impressions

Your channel icon is your best asset, but be sure to spend time on all of your channel assets!

Sample Video from my YouTube Channel

YouTube Help

The playbook is a go to YouTube manual that will show you the nuts and bolts of:

getting started with YouTube One channel

how to program your channel and optimize the viewer's experience

how to make sure your videos will reach the widest audience

build your YouTube community (much like our HubPages community) - In fact, many hubbers have also created channels

find resources - checklists, glossaries, keyword resources

The playbook is available for free downloads. It is printable, so you may study it at your leisure. There is also a sign up page for updates to the playbook.

The playbook can be used in place of the YouTube Creator Academy for those wishing to enhance their YouTube channel. It is the best place to start if you are just getting into the YouTube experience.

My Certificate of Completion

Source

Videos Work to Enhance Hubs Too

Even if you don't use your video camera to make YT videos, you should still look for how to videos on YouTube to see if there are any great shorts and video guides that can add just the right touch to your hub. It counts towards your hub score!

When looking for videos, be sure to watch the whole video and confirm that it is relevant to your hub. Look for copywrite violations, or videos that haven't seen much viewership. HubPages will send you a notice if a video loses its URL or is no longer published, so be sure to check your 'broken links' section of your stats page at HP from time to time. Remove videos that are no longer valid and replace them with even better videos.

YouTube Basics

Do you have a YouTube Channel? If so, leave the channel URL in the comments.

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I thought your YouTube channel was great before. I've not visited it for awhile now but as soon as I'm done with this comment I'll go and check it out. That's great that they have classes you can take to improve your work.

This is really useful. Ya know...I need to look into this...as well as Google academy, Teachers Pay Teachers, G+ academy...so many academies...so little time. Haha. But this is really great and thanks for sharing. :)

drbj 3 years ago from south Florida

This is at the top of my Bookmarking list, Lela. Thank you for your time and effort and sharing, of course. Learning more about You Tube is high on my bucket list, m'dear.

Austinstar 3 years ago from Somewhere in the universe Author

Start with the Playbook and jump right in, y'all!

Glimmer Twin Fan 3 years ago

Thanks for this hub! I have my videos for my hubs on youtube and really only know how to upload them. I bet I could use them as a more powerful tool, just have not gotten around to it. Your hub has inspired me. Thanks!

Austinstar 3 years ago from Somewhere in the universe Author

It's worth it. I'm thinking of starting a Vlog there and link it throughout social media. It's like icing on the cake.

christopheranton 3 years ago from Gillingham Kent. United Kingdom

This is mine. I'll have to check out yours later. Thanks for all the useful tips.